Flick (18 page)

DOOMSDAY

Friday night, pre-deal, I'm at Ash's place. I blasted through my exams—I couldn't say if I did well or not, but they're done—and stayed at Rainbow's again on the Thursday. She went to college early again, and I made sure I slept until she got back for lunch, after her morning classes, not running the risk of being conscious, knowing now how easily I can give in to temptation, knowing what a weak little shit I am. I may trust Rainbow. I don't trust myself.

So, it's Friday night, the arranged evening of the deal, and after a truly disturbing phone call from Kyle I'm already getting the sweats. Apparently we're going to some really weird, really serious crack house. Great. Kyle also said, “Oh yeah, and don't be seen doing anything crazy 'cause we could get banged up for years for this,” which wasn't very helpful on the whole staying-calm front. Meanwhile I'm starting to think maybe we should just sell it off in parts so we're not dealing with anyone properly mental, and this conundrum has left me at a loss for what to do—whether to meet the boys tonight, or to bunk off and convince them to do it another time, in smaller cuts. Ash has filled in the others on my situation after a particularly long phone call in which I explained to her every which way I am fucked (vis-à-vis the deal—I don't tell anyone about my OCD at Rainbow's). She flicked through a magazine (I could hear the pages turning) and every so often gave an infuriating, “Yeah,” so I'm still impatiently awaiting advice. From anyone. When I get there I brief Mike on it as we go up the stairs, but inside the attention is firmly on other matters so I wait for my turn to rant. I pace the flat with a fixed frown and chain-smoke maniacally. Daisy and Trix are there, and the girls are looking at Trix's portfolio of modeling shots she had done last week at Sandford shopping center that her pervy, old boyfriend paid for. This is entertainment (and that was deadpan sarcasm). They chat about girly shit and I can
feel
the clock ticking on the mantelpiece.

“Wow, they've done a great job on your hair haven't they?” Ash.

“D'you think I should get some done?” Ella.

“Definitely, I am, we should all go!” Daisy.

“I'm going to put them on MySpace and see how many comments I get! Heeheehee!!” Trix. What kind of stupid fucking twatty name is “Trixie”? I can feel my blood boiling. The clock chimes eight.

“Oooh, wow, your highlights look pretty!”

“Jesus,” I mutter.

Fucking hell. Fucking hell. Fucking hell.

“Look, Flick, don't she look great?”

“Yeah.” I swig some water. “Airbrushing is a beautiful thing, now can we get to my problems, please?”

“Huh?” Trixie says, staring at the photos, wondering what airbrushing is.

“What's so wrong with this that it's such a crime to you, Flick?” Ash rolls her eyes at me.

“Nothing, nothing at all, it's just a massive stereotype and utterly pointless, vain, boring and pathetic.” I mimic Trix to perfection. “ ‘I'm going to be a model because basically I have no GCSEs and no other choice,' it's a beautiful, beautiful thing and I'm glad your lives are so full, but you'll all get knocked up next year anyway so it doesn't matter right now! Can we move on to something important, like how I'm going to do this deal and get out of this shithole without getting killed by Fez?”

“FUCK, Flick!” A sudden, and completely unexpected, outburst from Ashley. She stands up to her full height, which is actually quite impressive when you include her hair. “No we can't!” She glares at me like I'm the Antichrist, there is a stony silence, and when I start to speak again she cuts in angrily. “I'm fucking fed up of you coming round here looking down on us all as if you're fucking
deigning
to spend time with us and refusing to fuck us as if we're
beneath
you.”

“What the fuck—?” I say, outraged, but she cuts me off, waving her Smirnoff Ice in the air.

“You don't want to be a stereotype, Flick, but you play your own games to replace the ones you avoid and you fill a role and a place in the grand scheme of things, just like everyone else does. I'm sick and fucking tired of you thinking you're better than us. You might not be a slag, Flick, and you might not treat women like shit, but you're a stoner and a druggie and a cock when you're drunk and you throw up everywhere just like the rest of us so fuck you, Will Flicker.”

She gestures at Daisy, Ella and Trix, all sitting on the crummy sofa trying not to look at me but unable to take their eyes off us, me and Ash, facing each other down like bulls.

“At least Trix is trying to make a go of it. What are you doing with your life, ay? Pissing and whining over a deal. If you weren't a coward, you'd tell Fez no and take the beating. But you won't, and not 'cause there's no way out, but because without the fucking drama of this fucking deal there's nothing really in your life, Flick. You FUCKING WASTER.” Ash pounds the floor across the flat, and, with her last words, exits into the bathroom. She slams the door and we hear sounds of her rolling a joint and bursting out crying. I leap over to the door, kicking bottles out my way, and yell through it.

“Ashley! ASHLEY! You FUCKING open this door!” All the heat and muscle that there is in my body feels fucking angry, like a fire that's been poked into life, the coals turned over 'til the flames lick up through the chimney. I beat on the door with a fist. “FUCKING OPEN IT!”

“FUCK OFF!” she screams, choking on something—tears, smoke, pills, who the fuck knows.

“WILL!” A deep voice yells from behind me. I turn around, staring at the group, Trix, Daisy, Ella, Josh, Jamie and Mike, dotted over the living room. I stare wildly at the three guys.

“What?” I spit murderously from between curled lips. Silence. I measure in at about six foot, same as the other guys, but I'm broader than most of my friends. I look older than them, my shoulders and frame wider than most, in a good way. I'm muscular, my eyes are so dark they're almost black, and my face is meaner and rougher looking. I look like your stereotypical fucking rough 'un, narrow eyed and old before his time. Maybe I'm soft underneath, but you wouldn't try it to see. At least, Josh, Jamie and Mike don't. No one says anything.

Ashley screams again from the bathroom, in between scarcely disguised sobs: “FUCK OFF!”

I punch the door one last time, flinging my right arm carelessly at the wood.

“Upset 'cause I wouldn't fuck you, Ash?” She bursts out with fresh tears and I shake my head and articulate disgust to the ceiling: “Fucking slag.”

I walk over to where Ash's wallet is and spitefully, half unaware of what I'm doing, take out a small handful of notes. Josh moves as if to stop me and I stare coldly into his eyes. His hand falters midair and drops back to his side. He looks down, eyes flickering away from my own. It's at this point that I have more power over any of my mates in the room, and, ironically, the least over myself. I have lost it. I am taking thirty quid from a friend for no reason whatsoever, other than to get her back for being a bitch. I'm not even sure if she was being a bitch. Sentences from her outburst start to make sense, and I block them out my head by frowning, the simplicity of me being right and Ashley being wrong that much easier to deal with than the reverse. I nod at Josh, narrowing my eyes for just a second.

“That's right.” I feel like I'm watching myself from above, as if I'm a character in a film. The mean one, the one that gets shot towards the end. Shit, I think abstractedly, I hope I don't get shot. Then, Nah, you won't, you've thought of it now. I walk out the apartment to silence from the main room and, in the background as if on a loop, Ash shouting, “FUCK YOU, FLICK, FUCK YOU!” Extremely cinematic, I think. I call Kyle and he meets me with Dildo and Danny in the square.

SCUM

“Fucking bitch deserves all she gets,” is Kyle's evaluation of the Ashley situation. Kyle seems to have become a meaner fucker in days. He stands head stuck out, hands on hips as if ready for battle, and his speech flows between serious
Snatch
-style thug and a complete parody of the same character.

We're standing in a dim fucking alleyway, shit all about us. Danny kicks a takeaway carton away from him. The windows of the flat in front of us are boarded up, and according to Kyle, a clapped-out fucking junkie lives inside. We're going to try and sell him the coke. I'm not exactly looking forward to it. But I think, Fuck it, if a twathead like Fez can make a deal so can I. I can be fucking scary too. I can be the big cock in the room, as the incident at Ash's proved. I light up a joint and we pass it about.

Kyle taps out a code on the door, but it swings open, already unlocked.

“OI!” he shouts. “Anyone in?”

We hear a moan in the back and kick our way through bits of old cardboard boxes and newspaper to a dingy living room. The whole place reeks of piss. We hear coughing coming from the stairs, and a lanky guy, with limp brown hair, wearing a vest and gray cord trousers, practically falls into the room with us. He looks familiar but I can't place from where. We move closer in the dingy light. This is when I notice his veins. They stick out on his pale yellow skin like someone has drawn them in blue biro down his arms. There is a massive bruise on the inside of each elbow, golden brown underneath, with a fresh blue-purple ring in the center. Worse than these fresh track marks are scars, where his skin makes tiny whorls, like burst blisters in a row on his forearm. The veins protrude, so these little marks are thrust at us. He stares at us, confused, zombified. He looks sweaty, which is probably the most trivial thing I could note right now.

We all look to Kyle, who has gone suddenly quiet. Fucking hell. Wimp. I shake my head, push past him and walk forward decisively.

“We have some coke to sell,” I say. “You want in?”

The zombie looks at us. “How much you got?”

I shrug, and because in reality I have no idea I simply pull the package out of Kyle's hands and show him. “That much.”

The zombie leans forward like an inquisitive bird, his eyes lighting up. I'm reminded of kids on their birthdays. “That's a lot.” He looks back at us. We exchange glances and wait for something a little more concrete. “I think I'll have to ask Mark.” He turns around unsteadily and, holding the banister, stumbles back up the stairs. We hear a muted conversation.

Danny looks at me incredulously and mouths, “Mark? Ooh, how posh!”

“Come on up!” A deeper voice, not the zombie's, shouts to us from above. We climb the stairs. The stairwell is tiny and we have to go one by one. No one wants to go first, so I do. At the top of the stairs there are three doors. A green light emanates from one of them.

I retch as soon as I'm through the door. The room reeks of BO and piss. A skinny blond girl, with the same lank hair as Zombie, who I swear to God cannot be older than thirteen, lies naked, except for a pair of dirty gray knickers and square black sunglasses, on a large beanbag. She has abscesses all over her body, and her nose is bleeding. An older guy steps off of her and zips up his fly. This is Mark.

“How do, lads?” He pulls on a T-shirt that says “Monkey See Monkey Do” in yellow letters on blue. He looks about twenty-nine and in slightly better shape than the others. Still, he doesn't have any meat on his bones. His face is ratty, his nose pointy and eyes dark and hooded. He looks like Josh Hartnett on smack. To be fair, he's weirdly attractive.

He grins. “Heard you've got something for me?”

I hear Danny whisper behind me, “Just do it and let's get out.” So I watch my hand pull the packet out of my jacket. Mark darts in towards me and takes it instantly.

“Who mashed it up?” He holds it up to the light.

“I don't know.” I frown, trying not to show on my face that I don't know what “mashed it up” means. “Fezzer?”

“Fez? He's a dick.” Mark chuckles darkly. I get the feeling we could be friends if it weren't for the fact that Mark's supposed to be the most fucked-up guy this side of Sandford. “It doesn't look quality.” He tosses it back to us. “I'll give you seven fifty.”

“Bollocks!” Luckily Kyle pipes up. “I cut it myself. It's good shit. There's eight eight balls there. Twelve hundred quid for the lot.”

“What the fuck am I going to do with this much coke, ay?” Mark suddenly gets aggressive. “I hope you little shits aren't wasting my time.”

“Don't call me a little shit,” says Dildo, slowly and hesitantly. He stands a foot above Mark.

“All right, mate.” Mark grins, suddenly overly friendly again. “Just a question, did you know you can get life for dealing?”

“No you can't,” says Kyle. “You can get fourteen years but not life.”

“Erm, no.” Mark laughs, and then his face drops. “You can get life.” We are suddenly all nervous. We look at each other. Mark bursts out with what I can only describe as a guffaw. “Didn't you know that? Fucking hell!” He makes a noise like he's choking, wheezing, having an asthma attack or something, and I'm in half a mind to make him sit down and put his head in between his legs, but then the wheezing slows and he stand upright and pats his chest. “I'll tell you what . . .”

The blond girl spits up behind him. Seriously. It happened. This occurs on my periphery as my pupils are rooted to Mark, this oddly charismatic bundle of energy in the middle of the room.

“I'll tell you what. I'll take three-quarters of it then, for nine hundred pound, all right?” Everyone looks at me. Kyle shrugs.

“All right,” I say quietly.

“All right!” Mark jovially scoops the coke back from me and weighs it on some scales, overlooked by Kyle and myself. He gives us the leftovers in the bag and grins at us. “See? I've more than halved your troubles. Aren't we mates now?”

Zombie stands up in the background and gets a beer out of a small Coca-Cola fridge. I knew not to trust Coca-Cola. He leans against Mark, who puts his arm 'round poor Zombie, licks a finger and sticks it in the coke. He smiles widely. “I like it.”

We turn to go. “Thanks, Mark,” I say.

As I get to the door—first in, last to leave—I feel a rough hand on my shoulder.

“Hey,” Mark's big dark pupils ask me innocently, almost pleading with me. “Aren't we mates now, yeah?”

We hold eyes for a moment. I try to work out whether he's serious. He looks almost concerned. Poor bastard. He's as fucked as Fez and maybe more. I wonder if the real Mark is just a shadow to him now, someone that used to exist before he bought his emotions off some scummy dealer. I pat him on the arm.

“Yeah, Mark, we're mates.” I nod sincerely.

As I follow Dildo's silhouetted frame out the front door I finally realize where I know Zombie from: he was two years above me in school, the blond girl on the beanbag his younger sister.